HATRED OR UNDYING LOVE?

HATRED OR UNDYING LOVE?

By Peter Fredson

September 13, 2005

I spend much time reviewing my computer files, which now occupy about 5 gigabytes of space, to see how things started and to try and prognosticate how they might end. While looking at the Bill Clinton years I am impressed at the hatred expressed against him by Republicans, certainly tantamount to their hatred toward Franklyn Delano Roosevelt. Intense, bitter, vicious, nasty, seething and immensely personal. All the Bush people were outraged at his conduct, long before the Lewinski affair. They spent a fortune, of taxpayer money, to try to impeach him, and used him as a whipping boy on which to blame all their troubles, including the 9/11 disaster. He occasionally still serves that useful purpose for Bush.

Yet, today the senior George Bush is a very good friend of Bill Clinton, to the extent that junior George W. Bush has remarked that his father likes Bill better than himself. The two ex-Presidents work together quite well on projects of national and international concern. This does not mean that Bill is refurbished, merely that as a former President he now has a legacy and a place in history for Republicans.

A number of Republican Senators that tried to impeach Bill Clinton are still serving terms of office. But their moral fervor, their intense outrage at presidential lies or conduct, is strangely muted when it comes to George W. Bush. Clinton committed fellatio joyfully as an escape from the tensions of high office, while George W. Bush got off on long vacations cutting brush in Texas for the same reason.

Bill Clinton did not believe that oral sex was even “sex”, which for him was the insertion of penis into vagina with consequent orgasm. But Republicans equated this with Sin against the Holy Ghost, which is unforgivable, damnable, and eternal. Most of the people supporting Bush seem to think that lies leading a nation to war are not as serious as lies about blowjobs.

If Bill Clinton had committed his nation to war with false intelligence and had consistently lied about weapons of mass destruction, mushroom clouds, aluminum tubes, yellow cake, etc., and not one senior official, certainly not the president , were held responsible for anything, would the Republican Senators be comfortable with that?

If Bill said that the reason he invaded a sovereign country was that its leader was an evil person would the Republican Senators all applaud as they are doing now? If Bill used secrecy as a cover for expropriating land in Iraq, taking its oil, killing civilians wholesale, destroying the infrastructure of a country, would the Republican Senators think it was a prank, a Leo Straussian exercise of legitimate power? If Bill said that he had no entrance or exit strategy, would the Republican Senators applaud his wisdom?

If Bill said that he was going to “stay” a failed course, would not some Republican Senator flay him alive for stupidity?

If the “noble” reason for invasion was shown to be a lust for world dominion, the erection of several bases for future bullying or invasion, the making of a super-embassy from which to dominate the entire Middle East and keep American troops there for generations, and (as an afterthought) to seize the steadily vanishing sources of finite petroleum, would not some Republican Senator have gotten up and filibustered against such outrageous conduct until his voice and strength gave out?

If Bill had by his lies caused the death of several thousand of our “brave boys” would not the entire Republican Senate have risen up, pounded on their desks with fists, and clamored for his resignation?

If Bill had, through neglect or insouciance, caused the death of thousands of people in a flood, would not the entire Senate now be screaming for his ouster as an incompetent and exploitive President? Would they now be asking people not to “play the blame game?” Or, would they be out in force with civil dissent, parades, media blitzes, dramatic speeches, shouting for Cabinet Blood and Immediate Action, waving flags and crosses?

It seems that the Bush followers are fully committed, regardless of any circumstances, any stupidity of their leader, to forgive him in advance of blunders, folly, death, destruction or any other crime or sin he might possibly commit. Nothing he can do, short of kicking a puppy to death on TV, will diminish their love, their ardor, their emotional attachment to him.

It is far beyond reason, way beyond logic, and well into the farthest reaches of emotion that their attachment is rooted. Starry-eyed Bush lovers should face the fact that in the Bush rhetoric on war they were brainwashed by misinformation and religious rhetoric.

The Bush True Believers seem willing to accept a fascist government, a theocracy, a bullying preemptive repressive government in return for struts, smirks, grins, handshakes, high-stepping and a promise of Paradise waiting, with or without 72 Virgins. They are willing to accept bible quotations from Billy Graham or Jerry Falwell in preference to our constitution.

They are heedless of short-range consequences of environment, economy, politics, education, health, or other earthly concerns. They have a Savior who will lead them out of a democratic constitutional earthly wilderness into a giddy climb up the Tower of Babylon where they can reach up and touch the Angels.

And everyone will die happily ever after. They should at least be warned that George Bush lies frequently, steadily, and without shame.